I haven't used soap or shampoo in a year, and it's awesome
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As for soap I use it as I need to. Sometimes I can't get whatever is living in my pits to go away with any amount of hot soapy water and scrubbing. I posted on reddit about not using soap about 6 months into it and caught a lot of flack from people who just assumed I was a stinky hippy that didn't realize it.
A relatively healthy person with good hygiene can definitely get by without soap: sweat, rinse, dirt, rinse.. it's pretty easy to stay clean. I shaved (with a buzzer) my pits around when I started this and kept them short; this seemed to help a lot.
As to why people would do it; I was literally getting compliments on my skin. Your skin gets nice and soft after a while and then, when you use soap your skin isn't adjusted to it and it gets sucked dry.
That being said, I use soap regularly these days (just on pits/groin/ass).
These "naturalistic" or "pre-technology/paleo" arguments are bunk. Otherwise medicine would be unnecessary, as this argument leads to the conclusion that the body would regulate itself when presented with illness.
For instance, after I went barefoot, I had significantly less back pain and have been able to triple my walking distance; furthermore, I'm able to run now.
What is going to happen, we are going to learn a few things, uncover old ways of doing things, adapt them to modern time, or toss them back into the trash.
My opinion: This isn't simple. The way you smell is due to a combination of chemical and bacterial/microbial influences and changing one of them can upset the balance, temporarily causing die-off, purging effects, etc. before some new balance is firmly established. For me, I first spent years getting myself healthier before it made sense to give up shampoo. Presumably, for those folks where this works, they don't have whatever chemical and/or microbial issue causes you to smell when you give it up. (My experience: The kind of stable temperature/climate you live in does a very poor job of killing off microbes. Drastic changes in temperature are hostile to microbes and make it harder for the same ones to be causing smelliness year round. Ridding your home of some microbe of that sort is quite challenging and you probably would not be willing to go to the lengths I have gone to in order to accomplish something like that.)
EDIT: I will add that I do put salt in my bath water. So it is not like I am using nothing to kill stuff.
The only thing I just don't use is deodorant. It gives me real skin problems (rashes on dried skin), so I just use soap and water at various intervals during the day. It is so weird - tried various brands, same problems every time I use it again.
Honestly, that's why I thought it was worth trying in the first place: even if I never noted any side effect of using soap/shampoo, maybe I just don't notice them because that's what I consider to be normal.
Still, it really sounds like a fad, but if it is helpful, why not.
2. I worked hard on reconfiguring my body chemistry, some of which is specific to my genetic disorder but my general understanding is most modern diets are too acid and high acidity promotes viral/bacterial growth. So check your PH balance and work on it if it is out of whack.
3. I embraced ascetism and I own very few possessions. It was a necessary part of getting myself well and we have found that if microbes are growing on us, then they are also growing on all the things we routinely touch. So you may not be able to break the cycle without some lifestyle changes of a sort that most people sternly reject.
This is true whether or not you shower :)
At least in my case, the dietary change didn't make any difference with body odor. The only difference was actually far less gas on paleo, from not eating soy apparently.
People might try this out in the winter, and swear by it in online forums until summer comes, or a stressful interview comes up (stress sweat stinks more than normal), or until a coworker with super sense of smell says something.
It may work great, but healthy skepticism is just as important as a willingness to buck convention.
To clarify, I am not saying it doesn't work, only that a few claims in a forum aren't "proof." I may even give it a try.
Anyway, worked for me. I'm also a fairly skinny guy with a low body fat percentage, not sure if that made any difference.
edit: It's also not a "willingness to buck convention", because you can ultimately just start using soap again. There's really nothing to be lost by trying it, imho.
What are you doing this for? Because you can? Because you have to spend less money on products? Because you disagree with using chemicals on your skin?
Most people will think you're disgusting if they find out. Entering into a psuedo-scientific debate with them will not work out in your favour. I don't think you should follow this just from a couple of people's anecdotes...
I find this hard to believe. My money's on confirmation bias.
My blond, 3-4 inch long hair is shiny and lays on my head just fine. When I wash it.. its about two days before it goes back to being the same. Mostly it gets frizzy, but my scalp will also dry out to some degree, so I wouldn't be surprised if someone had increase dandruff.. though there is probably a bit of hyperbole going on here.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and all I'm seeing here is one single piece of anecdotal evidence. If you want to convince me of the virtues of forgoing soap, then give me a peer reviewed paper in a major journal, not a blog about how your family and random strangers say that you don't smell terrible.
But hey, if anecdotal evidence is all we need today then let me add some of my own: I know two people who have admitted to trying this, and I really did like to be several feet away from both.